Sometimes people sit with their bodies stiff for meditation. That effort and stiffness doesn’t really bring in that meditative quality but may bring about some anger in them.

If you have meditated, you should feel light like a flower, feel soft, beautiful, delicate and comfortable within. If you feel uptight, angry and upset, then meditation has not happened.

Now don’t think, ‘Oh I have to feel very soft and gentle. All that Guruji said has to happen.’ Then it will not happen because that anxiety itself will become a block for it to happen. That is why I said it is a very delicate situation. You cannot expect things to happen, you simply have to be. Just be!

Experiences come, change and go away. Every day there will be different experiences. Never mind. Just the procedure needs to be correct. What is the procedure? We don’t have to be uptight and at the same time we don’t have to be loose in the body either.

If you start with your body being loose then it doesn’t work. If you start with lying down on your couch with your legs up, that too will not work... It is not like the way you watch television.

You start with your spine erect but body relaxed, shoulders relaxed. Not stiff but relaxed. Keep the head straight. Then you close your eyes and let go. During meditation if the head goes down or to the side, it is okay. Whatever position it takes is fine. But you don’t start with that. The best example is of a coat hanging on a hanger. Similarly, the body is hanging, only the spine is erect.

Based on a series of talks entitled ‘Secrets of meditation’ given by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar on April 21, 2012, California, these talks have been made into knowledge sheets.